


soft, spoken in the dead of night

by fiveyaaas



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Bisexual Number Five | The Boy, Character Study, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sex Work, Smut, Whump, title taken from “all eyes on you” by st lucia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:02:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27847366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: Her book was his only companion now. Oftentimes, he’d thumb through the chapter she’d written about him before bed, rereading the entire thing whenever he needed her.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	soft, spoken in the dead of night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xxbunnykissesxx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxbunnykissesxx/gifts).



> So this is just a fic I wrote real quick for xxbunnykissesxx, and I really rec y’all read her fics. (ESPECIALLY the corpse bride au and WAP AHHHH i have many thoughts about them both!)

He’d tried sleeping with somebody, pretty soon after he was introduced back into a world with other people, but he’d nearly vomited when she’d started to touch him. Easily lying, he told the woman that he was married, apologizing and saying he loved somebody else (though the last portion wasn’t really a lie, he supposed.) She’d not been upset, just telling him that he should at least tell his wife, and he’d hastily agreed, wanting her to leave. Just being near somebody in that way was causing anxiety to prickle throughout his body, and, once she was gone, he actually had vomited, keeping his head against the cold tile in the bathroom for hours afterwards. 

When he’d gone to receive his next assignment, he wondered if he’d ever be capable of being with anyone romantically. 

There was retirement, of course. He imagined it the entire time he’d worked up the courage to kill his mark. His mind kept going to Vanya, who’d never mentioned being married in her book. It was wishful thinking. She wouldn’t want him, especially as old as he was. If she had seen Five, she wouldn’t have responded the way the woman had tonight, going back to a hotel easily. The thought of Vanya having sex at all didn’t sit right in his mind, imagining his sweet best friend who used to curl up beside him in bed when she was sad or had a nightmare. 

Imagining anybody else touching her, though, just filled him with rage. 

He shouldn’t be upset about it. For one thing, there was no way to know she even had slept with anybody. More importantly, though, he couldn’t expect her to wait for him. Not when he’d been the one to leave her. 

Her book was his only companion now. Oftentimes, he’d thumb through the chapter she’d written about him before bed, rereading the entire thing whenever he needed her. 

Shamefully, the night after he’d tried to sleep with the woman from the bar he’d gone to, he kept staring at the book, and hating where his thoughts kept going. But the reason he’d even wanted to sleep with that woman in the first place had been a way to get some sense of release from the awful things he’d be doing.

He pushed the book away, knowing logically that she wouldn’t be seeing what he was about to do but still wanting to shield the sweet image he’d created in his mind of her from it. When his hands slipped into his trousers, he closed his eyes. 

It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d thought of her when he’d done this. A lot of times it had happened with Dolores, closing his eyes as he ground against the plastic (and he only ever really remembered when it was something explicitly romantic that that’s what she’d been), his mind would drift to Vanya, he’d feel his release hit him immediately. Every time he’d think of Vanya, he’d waste whatever resources he could find to clean Dolores’s body, disgusted with himself. And even if he’d been convinced he had a breakthrough, those nights he’d always wrap his arms around her cleaned body, thinking of Vanya intentionally. 

Probably the most deplorable thing was that he’d call the mannequin Vanya after he’d cleaned the cum off of it and tucked it into his arms. 

Sometimes he’d just imagine her voice- or well, how he imagined it sounded. What brought him the most shame was usually the knowledge that he didn’t remember exactly what her voice even  _ sounded  _ like. It was a phenomenon he’d read about in a book on grief (that he’d only read because reading was all he could do during his time in the apocalypse.) It was normal that details like that would fade with time, but the idea that he could forget something as important as that always caused his body to tense up, wincing as he heard Dolores make a comment on it. Was it Vanya’s voice that she spoke in? Is that who he’d modeled it after? He hoped so. Dolores’s voice, for the most part, was a comfort. 

Other times it took more than imagining Vanya’s voice. He’d imagine the body he fantasized about her growing into, underneath him. It was always a nonsexual scenario when he first started fantasizing- something like he was protecting her from a bullet. That way her image wasn’t tarnished. 

But inevitably he’d start thinking of her small breasts in his palms, of the creamy skin above her navel, of her cunt glistening as he leaned down and lapped up all she had to offer. 

He’d start grunting out her name, unable to say anything more coherent, just thinking of how small she’d feel underneath him. How he’d cover her completely, and she’d feel safe with him above her. His hips would jut forward as he imagined her flipping them over, little tits bouncing as she begged him for attention he’d eagerly give. She’d tell him she loved him and that she’d waited for him because it was only him and-

Five gasped as his orgasm hit him, cum coating his hands. He pressed his face to the pillow, imagining the scent of the green apple shampoo she’d always used as he did. Technically, he could buy it now if he wanted to. He wasn’t restricted by the rules of the apocalypse anymore. Would it be wrong to buy it? To inhale the scent of it and imagine it was her? 

The clarity that came after climaxing was starting to coax itself into his mind, and he couldn’t take the shame. It was wrong in the first place to imagine her. Especially when there was no possible way that she’d want him. 

Not like this.

* * *

He tried sleeping with another woman in the 1930s, but he asked her to leave too. In the 1970s, he tried asking a man, thinking it might be easier for him, but he asked him to leave too. In the 1990s, he tried multiple people and accepted that maybe he was just incapable of all things dealing with sex. 

Maybe he’d been so tainted by not being around anybody that he’d never be able to have sex with anybody at all.

* * *

It was out of concern that there was something wrong with him that he started watching porn. A lot of it was annoying, not wanting to watch women fake orgasms or men to not seem to care. Part of him knew that if any of the people he’d grown up with had ever heard that he was grossed about by the concept of emotionally unfulfilling sex, they’d all make fun of him for it, but he liked to think that it was just a habit from having never been around anybody for decades. People wasting their time with that kind of thing felt… wrong. Like they were wasting precious time that they could spend with people they actually cared about. 

And, yeah, maybe he shouldn’t try to overthink porn, but it just made him upset to look at.

Still, he tried to search, thinking that he’d somehow been broken by the apocalypse, knowing he had a sex drive but disgusted by most people. He wanted to prove to himself that he would go back to thinking like he once had because he  _ had  _ at one point. It was a result of trauma that he was thinking this way at all. He hadn’t always felt this way, and it bothered him that he did now. 

So, he started watching fetish porn instead, hoping it was just that he was watching too vanilla. 

That didn’t work either.

For a time.

* * *

When he started listening to audio masturbation clips, it was just on a whim, wanting to see if something that felt more authentic and also only featured one person (because he still had a problem with the nonromantic sex, which he was still embarrassed about) would make it better. It seemed like a relatively unpopular way to consume porn, but he didn’t particularly care, was just searching for something that proved to himself that he could live normally after his time in the Commission was over. Or, really, so that he could live a life that he’d dreamed of during the apocalypse and had essentially scorned once he was reintroduced to other people. 

The surprise he felt as he realized that he was actually turned on by something that wasn’t thinking of Vanya or reading her book nearly overtook the desire that had come so abruptly. 

It was relieving to feel it, and he slipped his hands into his trousers without shame at all, listening to the woman’s soft moans. She whined almost like she was shy about it, despite the fact that she’d recorded it knowing people would hear it. It endeared him to the woman on the recording, and he wondered if that had been the purpose for just a moment before she gasped more freely. 

His cock twitched, and he pushed his boxers down, actually freeing himself, listening to her stutter out a noise repeatedly. It occurred to him that she was probably trying to say  _ ‘fuck’  _ but she wasn’t able to fully say it, and it came out more like  _ ‘fi,’  _ causing him to groan. Even though it wasn’t about him, he imagined it was her saying this to him, that she was chanting his name as she got herself off. That he was there with him-

When she started shrieking, he stopped moving completely, coming into his hand right as he pulled it away in horror at the realization of what he was listening to. 

And just like that he remembered her voice. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!!!💕💕💕


End file.
